


45 rpm

by claudusdiei



Series: make this moment last forever [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Getting Together, Introspection, M/M, Pining, Post-Time Skip, Pro volleyball players, author will take any opportunity to clown on miya atsumu, furudate wont write a backstory for sakusa so i will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23994664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claudusdiei/pseuds/claudusdiei
Summary: on forever and right now, by sakusa kiyoomi
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: make this moment last forever [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755259
Comments: 57
Kudos: 844





	45 rpm

**Author's Note:**

> [♫](https://youtu.be/WCphVz0ZGns)

Mount Fuji is 3,776 meters tall and paints as a sprawl of white flowers from 800,000 meters above.

This is what Sakusa Kiyoomi’s grandmother tells him as the mountain fades in the distance while they’re walking. It’s a quiet morning in Yamanashi, disturbed only by the faint humming of birds as they gather food. The sakura trees have just begun to bloom, the pinks of cherry blossoms shyly accompanying the steady rise of the sun. 

A breeze coils around Kiyoomi’s hair, skimming its slim fingers through his curls and releasing. He stops for a second to admire the view of Lake Kawaguchiko and the mountain in the distance. The clouds hide the peak of the mountain from his view, but he can vaguely make out the shape of its body. 

“Kiyoomi,” his grandmother calls. He likes the way she stretches the ‘o’ out when she says his name. “Let’s get to the market before the salmon sells out.” Her palm is outstretched towards him. 

He rushes to her side, grasping her hand firmly in his as they walk towards the town. As they near, the sun finally wrenches itself from the confines of reds and pinks surrounding it. It brushes aside the clouds and boldly ascends, shining down on Kiyoomi and his grandmother as they venture towards the tall buildings. 

“Your mother is visiting this weekend.”

Kiyoomi hums in response. His parents usually visited around this time each month, bringing along small trinkets they collected from hole-in-the-wall stores in Tokyo. He’s been to their apartment once, a few months back. It was a small, one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen barely large enough to fit three people in it. He remembers the shelves of books lining their bedroom and living room walls, the colorful spines of books peering at him curiously. 

(“Mommy, daddy, why don’t you live in Yamanashi with grandma and I?”

“Our jobs are in Tokyo, honey. One day when we buy a bigger apartment, you can live with us.”)

His grandmother stops in front of a store he doesn’t recognize. There’s a smudged poster plastered to the window that reads, _Vintage Records Cheap_. His grandmother ponders the store for a minute before continuing to walk towards the market. Shrugging, he bounds along after her, enjoying the nip of warmth from the morning sun. 

When they finish buying the food they need for the week, it’s already noon. The sun greets them merrily as they exit the market, basking them in heat. Kiyoomi smiles back at the sun and follows his grandmother as she begins the trek home. 

They stop by the mysterious store again, this time with bags full of fruits and vegetables drooping from their arms. His grandmother pauses, once again, in front of the store. They stand in front of the store for a long time. 

Kiyoomi’s beginning to get nervous. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, wondering why they’re standing in front of a weird store with a weird poster hanging on the window. 

“Kiyoomi, do you remember the gift that Akita-san gave us when she first moved here?”

Kiyoomi did not remember the gift that Akita-san gave to them when she first moved here. His grandmother must have known from the look on his face because she continued with, “It was a record player, remember?” 

Kiyoomi does not know what a record player is and is sure he has never seen one but nods anyway. His grandmother’s eyes sparkle at that, reminding him of the twinkling stars in the night sky. 

“Well, I never used it because we don’t have any records lying around anywhere, but now that this record store has opened up we might as well check it out, right?” 

Colorful rows of paper-thin containers greet them when they enter the store. A waft of decaying paper tickles Kiyoomi’s nose as he looks around. The walls are covered in equally colorful posters, some depicting dramatic angles of singers on stage and others depicting scenic backgrounds with words scrawled messily across. It’s quite - small. 

“Welcome to Rakuta Records!” a voice shouts from the back of the store. 

His grandmother peers towards where the voice came from. As if on cue, a teenage girl appears, dressed in paint-splattered overalls with her hair tied in a ponytail. 

“Hi! I’m Yuiko, how can I help you?” Her lips are pulled back in a warm smile as she waits for his grandmother to respond.

“Ah, this is actually my first time shopping for records, so I’m not really sure,” his grandmother laughs. 

Yuiko’s eyes glimmer, “Well, in that case, let me show you the ropes.” 

They end up purchasing five LPs and three 7-inch singles. Yuiko had explained to them how to take care of the records, demonstrating the cleaning process, and showed them how to set up a record player. When they return to their house, the sun has already begun to set. 

They find the record player in the storage closet and set it up together while golden light filters through the window. Kiyoomi glances out the window while his grandmother finishes tweaking with the stylus of the record player. The sun is a caricature of what it was in the morning, cowering away into hues of dark blue and violet. 

“Okay, Kiyoomi. We can play a song now,” she finally says when the sun has completely set. The only light source they have is that of the moon and stars. She gestures to the records splayed out on the floor, urging him to pick one. 

Kiyoomi picks the only colored vinyl record they bought, a translucent yellow disk whose color is barely visible in the night. He watches his grandmother set the record down on the turntable, adjusting the stylus so that it brushes the edge of the record, before allowing it to play. 

A soft violin begins playing, spilling over to drown the room in its melody. A piano riff joins in, weaving together with the violin, creating an intricate pattern that fills the room and leaks through the windows to the night sky. Kiyoomi laughs joyously, laughs even harder when his grandmother pulls him up to dance with her.

That night, under the moon and the stars, the meteors and the comets, the comforting presence of eight vinyl records, Kiyoomi spins and spins and spins. 

*

Tokyo is dirty.

That’s Kiyoomi’s first thought when he moves into the two-bedroom apartment his parents bought over the summer. His grandmother’s house had been clean, for she had, with the help of Kiyoomi, attempted a deep clean every weekend. Yamanashi was clean. Lake Kawaguchiko was clean. Even Rakuta Records, with its abundance of vintage vinyl records and shabby posters, was decently clean. 

The floors of the apartment creak like old bones when he drags his boxes across the living room. The paint of the walls in his room peel like flaky skin, pieces of eggshell white periodically falling to the floor. The cloudy window on the wall mocks Kiyoomi, teasing him and refusing to let him peer through to the outside world. He glances at the record player in one of the boxes, the one his grandmother had helped set up, and frowns. 

(“Take it with you to Tokyo, Kiyoomi. I won’t have much of a use for it here by myself.”)

He can’t set it down in a dirty place like this. So he starts cleaning. 

He cleans and cleans, cleans until he runs out of wipes, cleans until he runs out of disinfectant spray, cleans until his muscles ache, cleans until the Tokyo sun hides away behind tall, blurry buildings. 

It’s kind of cathartic, in the way that crying at the end of a frustrating day is. Watching the stains disappear from the window and the pieces of paint vanish from the floor, Kiyoomi thinks that he likes cleaning. 

He grabs the record player carefully from the box and sets it up the way his grandmother did, the way Yuiko did. He takes a record, the translucent yellow one, from its record sleeve, brushes off the dust, and sets it on the record player the way his grandmother did. 

A familiar violin and piano duo leak into his room, a pillar of comfort in a new, terrifying setting. He hums along to the tune, letting it flow through his veins and drench his body in its melody. 

The next day, he attends elementary school for the first time and decides that he hates it. He hates the grimy hands and the screeches that sound like scratched vinyl. He hates the way his classmates crowd around his desk and prod at his moles like he’s some sort of show bird. 

He’s on his way home that day when he notices a sign on the street. The letters are a terrible shade of neon pink, but they read _Vintage Vinyls for Sale_. They point to a dinky store on the side of a street. Kiyoomi reaches into his pockets, searching. His parents had given him more than enough money to buy lunch, lunch that he never bought, and he still had the money that his grandmother had given him before he left for Tokyo. 

He enters the store, a familiar smell of old paper surrounds him, and a familiar sight of rows and rows of vinyl records greets him. 

He buys two 10-inch singles, goes home, and half expects his parents to yell at him about his purchases. 

They don’t. Small mercies.

He gets into the tedious process of cleaning each vinyl, making sure not to damage the grooves as he rubs the cleaning solution over each record. And for the second time since he’s moved to Tokyo, he thinks about how _nice_ cleaning is. There’s no one to judge as he picks up pieces of dirt, pieces of his heart. 

(“Cleaning is like art, Kiyoomi,” his grandmother had said once, “It’s just another form of self-expression.”)

He plays each record twice, watching the stylus skim over the grooves of the records, barely kissing the surface. And maybe the records don’t overwhelm him like that one yellow record does, but they spin and spin, and Kiyoomi thinks that’s probably enough for him. 

*

Volleyball is for small, shrieking human-hyenas, Kiyoomi reasons. 

He’s just turned eleven and decides with fervent clarity that volleyball is not for him. The squeaking of sneakers against hardwood floor, the loud yelps from across the gym, and the whole _teamwork_ part of it do not clash well with who he is. 

His gym teacher must really hate him, for he always ends up on the same team as freaks that consume at least three cans of redbull every day. Are they not worried about their own health? Sure, Kiyoomi has never seen them actually drink three cans of redbull, but they probably do something along the lines of that. And whatever they do _can’t_ be healthy. They bounce around him frantically, chanting, “Kiyoomi-kun, Kiyoomi-kun, Kiyoomi-kun!” like tiny, neanderthal trolls. 

“Kiyoomi-kun,” one of them says seriously, “Since you’re the tallest, you’re gonna be our middle blocker, ‘kay?”

Kiyoomi doesn’t say anything and chooses to stalk towards the court by himself. They come bounding after him anyway, blissfully unaware of the fact that Kiyoomi is one second away from dropping out (Kiyoomi has had this conversation with his parents multiple times. They have told him that he can’t drop out of middle school. He thinks that this is a good enough reason to try it).

He stands on the court uselessly as the ball passes back and forth across the net. It’s not as demanding as the other team sports were, and Kiyoomi finds himself enjoying the lull of the white ball swinging from the other side of the court to his side and back. 

When it’s his turn to serve, he grips the ball tightly in his hands, wonders if he should tell his teammates that he’s not sure what to do and how to serve. 

He spins the ball in his hands. Watches the harsh lines on the white surface blur together in a whirlwind. The ball spins and spins like the vinyl records in his collection spin and spin, and he thinks that maybe, volleyball isn’t so bad after all. 

*

He visits his grandmother, sometimes.

It’s usually during his summer breaks, where he finds himself carefully packing the record player into a portable box, haphazardly shoving a week’s worth of clothes into a duffel bag, and buying a one-way train ticket to Yamanashi. 

They walk to the market together on the weekends and buy vinyl records on the way back. Kiyoomi, now twelve years old, tells his grandmother about volleyball while new records spin themselves dizzy on their record player. 

She smiles and tells him stories of the sun and the moon in exchange. Kiyoomi relearns what home is, on these quiet nights. Home is the old tatami mat in his grandmother’s living room, is the large windows on the wall, is the Yamanashi moonlight, is the creaky record player that Akita-san gifted them all those years ago. 

It’s Mount Fuji in the morning sun, the vintage record store tucked comfortably between the market and their home, the translucent yellow record sitting safely in his small, Tokyo bedroom, the faded posters on the wall of his grandmother’s living room, the stories of constellations that are breathed to life in the night. 

Under the moonlight, they tell stories, they laugh, and above all, they dance and dance. 

*

The cleaning thing is an accident.

It had started off as a stress-reliever of sorts. Kiyoomi would clean whenever he received a bad grade, whenever his classmates at school would incessantly pester him about his moles. He would carefully scrub at the grooves of his records whenever he was teased about his height, whenever he missed his grandmother. 

But then, he turned thirteen; school got harder and harder, and his grandmother got sicker and sicker. 

He finds himself running out of cleaning solution for his records, cleaning wipes for dusty surfaces, disinfectant sprays for germ-covered doorknobs. He finds himself scrubbing so hard at his skin in the shower that it starts peeling like the paint on his wall, scrubbing vigorously at the corners of his bathroom tiles where he was sure he saw a speck of dirt, scrubbing at the granite countertops in the kitchen when his parents weren’t looking. 

He finds solace in the form of stark white face masks and pale, nitrile gloves. 

If his parents find anything strange about his recent purchases and his frequent rendezvous to cleaning supplies stores, they don’t voice it. 

But underneath it all, Kiyoomi reasons that it’s fine. Tokyo gets dirtier and dirtier, but Kiyoomi is fine. 

*

Miya Atsumu tumbles into his life with all the grace of an oversized oompa loompa from _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_. 

Since Kiyoomi is nice and kind, he chooses not to tell Atsumu this. 

But Atsumu must not be nice and kind, because the first thing he says to Kiyoomi when they meet at the All-Japan Youth Training Camp is: “Sakusa Kiyoomi. I hope yer ready to get yer ass beat today.” 

Kiyoomi blinks. Atsumu’s voice reminds him of a broken record.

The fluorescent lights of the gym harshly beam down on the court, nothing like the summer rays in Yamanashi. He was supposed to be in Yamanashi this week. 

“Nothin’ to say, huh, Sakusa-kun? Kiyoomi-kun?” Atsumu’s smirk widens.

He hears sneakers squeaking behind him. He wonders how dirty the floors are, the nets, the balls. It would probably take him a few days to clean the entire gym. He scowls under his face mask.

“Sorry, have we met before?” 

Of course Kiyoomi knows of Miya Atsumu. He knows that he’s one of the best high school setters in the nation. He knows that he’s played against Inarizaki once or twice. But as he racks his brain for memories of actually _meeting_ Miya Atsumu, he comes up short. 

In any case, it’s amusing to watch the series of emotions that flit across his face at Kiyoomi’s question. It starts with shock, unadulterated, jaw-slacking shock, then confusion, then anger. 

“Ya think this is a joke, huh? We played ya at the Interhigh this year. Or did’ya forget?” He taps his foot on the ground petulantly. 

Kiyoomi vaguely remembers beating Inarizaki in a close, three-set game, vaguely remembers the Miya twins, and vaguely remembers preferring one over the other. Must have been the other one.

Atsumu is still tapping his shoe against the floor. Sneakers still squeak behind them. He hears shouts and calls for the ball, passing back and forth, the refreshing sound of a ball being slammed into the floor. Atsumu should stop tapping his foot so hard. 

“Right. Well, I’m going to go warm up now. Bye.” 

He stalks off towards the court and hopes that he would never have to speak to Atsumu again. 

They end up getting paired together for a two-on-two drill. Atsumu is quieter on the court and Kiyoomi decides he likes this version of Atsumu more. They rack up points rather quickly, and when the drill is over Atsumu goes over to high five Kiyoomi. 

Kiyoomi just stares at his palms, eyebrows raised. 

Something like realization flashes across Atsumu’s eyes. He lowers his hands and offers Kiyoomi a smile. “Good job, Omi-kun. We work well together, dont’cha think?” 

Kiyoomi only nods.

Atsumu doesn’t try to touch him after that.

*

The difference between 45 rpm and 33 rpm records is in the sound quality and playback time. 45 rpm records have precise grooves, allowing for the groove velocity to decrease the distortion of sound towards the center of the record and hold onto high frequencies. In exchange, 45 rpm records, in comparison to 33 rpm records, have reduced playback time. 

This is what Kiyoomi learns over a decade of hidden record stores, old books detailing the origins of vinyl records, and hours spent looming over a too bright computer screen. 

Kiyoomi thinks he probably likes 33 rpm records more. After all, they last longer than 45 rpm ones do. With 33 rpm records, the promise of forever reaches out and embraces Kiyoomi, kisses his fingertips one-by-one, and holds his hand for as long as it can. 

Even now, the allure of forever clings to him. Because who needs quality when you have forever?

(“Do you really want that, though, if it’s just you and forever?”)

*

It comes down to this: 

The Black Jackals has Miya Atsumu, which, in hindsight is a red flag parading around in cautionary tape and warning signs if Kiyoomi’s ever seen one, but the Schweiden Adlers has Kageyama Tobio. Kageyama Tobio, who had called Kiyoomi _average_ right to his face the first time they spoke. Kageyama Tobio, who, in a burst of victorious joy, had patted Kiyoomi on the shoulder after a particularly satisfying kill and pretended like he didn’t see Kiyoomi flinch under his touch. Kageyama Tobio, who, in a bout of either extreme stupidity or extreme inconsiderateness, had taken Kiyoomi’s reaction as encouragement for more pats on the back and attempted high-fives. 

Kiyoomi decides that hates that more than having to deal with a blond-haired troll on steroids. 

*

Upon officially signing with the Black Jackals, Kiyoomi is coerced into two things:

1) Moving to a discreet apartment complex where the other members of the Black Jackals live. 

This was forced upon him by the Black Jackal’s management team. He had told them, quite ardently, that he would prefer to live in the apartment complex he had been living in since the start of university but was quickly shut up by an offer of a larger apartment that required him to pay significantly less for rent. 

He tells himself he accepted the offer for the sake of his vinyl collection. That’s it. It had nothing to do with the fact that his apartment smelled of stale bread and onions. Or the fact that no matter how hard he scrubbed at one of the kitchen tiles near the oven, there were three specks of dirt that would not disappear. Or the fact that the walls were so thin he could hear his neighbors’ terrible drunken renditions of old love songs during the early hours of the morning. 

He moves in three days after signing with the Black Jackals. 

2) Going out for drinks with the rest of the team.

“Omi-omi, come on. Ya don’t even haf’ta drink.” 

Atsumu is making a very strange face. His eyebrows are scrunched together, his eyes are slightly widened, and his lips are downturned in what Kiyoomi can only assume is a pout. If Atsumu is making a pleading face, and that’s a big if because Kiyoomi can’t tell _what_ Atsumu is doing, it’s not working.

“Yeah! It’s kinda just a get to know the team thing, you know?” Bokuto chimes in. 

“We’ll even let ya clean the table beforehand. Whad’ya say, Omi-omi?”

Kiyoomi is not getting drinks with the Black Jackals.

He ends up getting drinks with the Black Jackals. 

It’s not - horrible. 

The team, if anything, knows the concept of personal space. They include him in conversations, but don’t expect more than an affirmative huff or a nod. They ask him questions, but not to the point where Kiyoomi considers walking out of the izakaya. They lean in to listen to what he says, but they never touch him. 

Later, when the time creeps closer to morning rather than night, Meian tells them to all head back. 

Kiyoomi finds himself falling in step alongside a very drunk Miya Atsumu. He’s swaying from side to side, almost lazily, and as if he were merely sleep-deprived. 

“Did’ya enjoy yerself?” he slurs. 

Kiyoomi looks up at the sky. There’s a full moon out. Pale light seeps through the trees and shines a luster on the sidewalk. From where he’s standing, it looks as if the moon is reaching out to him. He wonders what would happen if he were to reach back and grab onto the hand of the man on the moon. 

“I guess.” 

Atsumu hums. He stumbles a little before he rights himself and looks up to where Kiyoomi is looking. Kiyoomi can’t see the stars, but he knows that Ursa Minor is blinking down at them right now. 

“Told ‘em not to touch’ya. Ya know, like before we got to the izakaya.” 

Kiyoomi stills at this. A cloud passes over the moon, shielding its lower half. The leaves rustle in the sweet, midnight breeze. 

“Oh.”

Atsumu hums again and seems to notice that Kiyoomi has stopped walking. He pauses beside him.

“Figured ya might still be prickly ‘bout the whole touching thing.” 

“Oh,” Kiyoomi says dumbly. He didn’t have a single drink tonight but he feels a buzz of warmth ignite at Atsumu’s words. The leaves shift again. 

They walk back to the apartment complex in silence, save for a few drunken remarks by Atsumu. When they arrive at Atsumu’s door, Kiyoomi surprises them both.

“Miya.”

Atsumu turns around, key in hand.

“Thank you.” 

Atsumu’s eyes widen comically before he smiles and bids Kiyoomi goodnight. 

*

The world is on fire. 

Vaguely, Kiyoomi registers that he’s probably dreaming. The world is on fire, and somewhere in the distance, a white building collapses. A plume of debris rises from the ruins of the building. 

The stars shine down on him, so close to the ground that they brush at the ends of Kiyoomi’s hair. A hand reaches out, pulls him off the ground and into the sky. 

He’s on the moon now, the stars fall in curtains around him and the Earth paints a pretty picture of blues and greens. The man on the moon grips his hands and twirls him around, and he’s spinning and spinning and spinning. 

Mount Fuji comes into view, and his grandmother was right. Mount Fuji does paint as a sprawl of white flowers from 800,000 meters above.

“Kiyoomi.”

He spins around. It’s the man on the moon. No, it’s Atsumu. _When did Atsumu get here?_ Wisps of smoke curl around his body, almost in warning. 

A hand outstretched. “Let’s run away to Yamanashi together.” 

“Okay,” Kiyoomi says because he hasn’t been to Yamanashi since he was _twelve_ , and he misses his grandmother and Mount Fuji and Rakuta Records. 

In one moment, he sees it all. The small living room he and his grandmother would dance in late at night, the sakura blossoms on the floor near Lake Kawaguchiko, the cramped record store huddled away in a bustling town. 

But he’s stuck. He’s stuck at the corner of a street, facing the living room, the Mountain, the record store. Stuck. The living room doesn’t move, moonlight doesn’t stream through the windows like it should. The sakura petals don’t float in the air around Mount Fuji like they should. The records don’t make a noise when they spin on the record player like they should. 

_Isn’t this what you wanted, Kiyoomi? Forever?_

A hand - no, Atsumu’s hand - yanks him from his reverie and onto an empty sidewalk that he recognizes as one leading to the market. There are sakura petals lining the ground and a breeze weaves through Atsumu’s hair. Birds chirp in the background, dancing in the sky above them. 

Atsumu tilts a flute of champagne towards Kiyoomi. He’s smiling, the edges of his lips digging into his cheek and his teeth flashing bright against the night sky. 

“To living in the right now.”

_Right now, right now, right now._

He holds up his own glass. 

“To living in the right now.”

*

Miya Atsumu is a child. 

That’s the only explanation as to why he’s sitting outside his apartment door with yellow flower petals surrounding him in a circle like a dejected teenager playing ‘He loves me, he loves me not’. 

As Kiyoomi gets closer to where Atsumu’s sitting on the floor, he notices the other biting harshly at his nails. _Huh_. 

“What are you doing.” 

Atsumu’s head jerks up to look at Kiyoomi. His eyes seem to burst out of his head like a strangled bobble-head. Kiyoomi accepts this as the only facial expression Atsumu can make when he’s surprised - one of a small doll with an abnormally large head and abnormally large eyes being squeezed by a five-year-old demon-child. 

“Can’cha see I’m mourning, Omi-kun?”

Kiyoomi doesn’t know if he counts sitting at the center of a ring of flower petals like a fragile teenage girl from one of those poorly-made romcoms that Komori forced him to watch as mourning, but then again, he isn’t Miya Atsumu. 

“Did somebody die?” he asks seriously. 

Atsumu huffs like he was asked if he wanted to eat someone’s dirty socks. He fumbles with the phone in his hand and shoves it in Kiyoomi’s face. 

It’s a picture of Kageyama Tobio kissing a smiling Hinata Shouyou on the cheek. 

_Ah_. So Atsumu really is stupid. Kiyoomi wasn’t exactly informed on the personal lives of his teammates, but even he knew that Hinata and Kageyama had some sort of Thing going on between them. 

He glances at Atsumu’s nails again. His fingers are an angry shade of red, the tips of his nails worn down from biting.

“Okay.” 

Atsumu gapes at Kiyoomi. His bottom lip is slightly puffy from biting at it. It glistens under the shitty apartment complex lighting. Kiyoomi is suddenly very glad for the face mask he is wearing. 

“Okay?” he squawks indignantly. “Whad’ya mean okay?” He looks considerably less like a shocked bobble-head and more like an old cat that’s been disrupted from a nap.

Kiyoomi reasons that he probably has two options in this situation. One: let Atsumu wallow dramatically in a pool of his own misery, or two: 

“Do you want some tea?”

*

Kiyoomi spends the next few weeks of the offseason with a large amount of Miya Atsumu lingering around his apartment. Initially, he had been surprised by his own rash decision to invite Atsumu over for tea, was certain that Atsumu would open his mouth and ruin whatever benevolence Kiyoomi had felt, but surprisingly, Atsumu had spent the entire time silent, absentmindedly prodding at the cup he was holding. 

That was then. Now, however -

“Omi-omi, Omi-omi, Omi-omi, Omi-omi.” 

Kiyoomi takes back whatever nice things he has said about Atsumu. 

“What.”

“What d’ya have all these records for?” Atsumu gestures to the record collection Kiyoomi keeps near the window in the living room. 

Kiyoomi looks to where he’s pointing. His records are lined up neatly, ordered by size and color, pressed up tightly against one another. From a distance, they resemble something of a small bookshelf, filled only with slender picture books worn down from years of reading and rereading. One of the records protrudes slightly from its place on the shelf. Kiyoomi makes a mental note to fix it later.

“I like collecting records,” he says simply. 

Atsumu looks at him, a silent question in his eyes. 

The window above the records is slightly ajar and the rays of the morning sun flit through the gap. A potted succulent sits on the edge of the window sill. Atsumu had knocked on his door at the ass crack of dawn today, looking crazed with his hair poking up in all different directions, and meekly asked for a cup of tea. 

Atsumu repositions himself on Kiyoomi’s couch and taps his fingers on the edge of the armrest. A drop of water from the shower Kiyoomi had made him take trickles down from his hair and onto a couch cushion. 

“My grandmother and I would listen to records a lot together. When I was younger,” he says. 

Atsumu hums in acknowledgment and focuses his attention back to the records. He has his eyes fixed on one in the bottom left corner. Kiyoomi remembers buying that one in his second year of high school right after a practice match with Fukurodani. The store had been one near Fukurodani, one he had never heard about before. It had been some sort of fusion between a coffee shop and a vinyl store, quaint with a handful of visitors shuffling through the aisles. He remembers ruffling through a few options before purchasing _Green_ by Hiroshi Yoshimura. 

“My grandmother’s - she’s sick now. Has been for a while.”

Atsumu nods at him and eyes the collection again. 

“Which one is yer favorite?” 

_Which one is your favorite, Kiyoomi?_

And really, the answer was a simple one. 

_Ah, I see. You know, Yuiko told me that one was one of a kind. They don’t have another copy of it in the store._

Kiyoomi gets up from the couch and pads over to the shelf. 

_That just makes it all the more special, don’t you think?_

He plucks out a yellow one, the same yellow one his grandmother had bought all those years ago. He brushes off the dust before setting it down on the turntable to play.

After a beat: “This is nice.”

Kiyoomi turns around to face Atsumu. His eyes are shut and he’s humming along to the soft melody of the record. His face is relaxed and his fingers have stopped tapping the armrest.

“Yeah, this is nice.” 

Sometime between noon and sunset, Atsumu falls asleep curled against the armrest. 

The record had stopped playing a while ago, a few minutes after Atsumu dozed off, washing Kiyoomi in a peaceful silence. 

Tufts of bleach-blond hair spill over Atsumu’s forehead as he sleeps, flitting occasionally from the gusts of wind that come through the window. His hair is significantly less disgusting to look at than his hair in high school. It also looks softer, more forgiving than the stiff spikes that Kiyoomi had dreaded looking at during Nationals. 

Kiyoomi shifts closer to where Atsumu is lying. He wonders what it would feel like to run his fingers through Atsumu’s hair.

The wetness from the shower Atsumu took had already dried off, leaving slightly frizzy strands of hair in its wake. His hair blends nicely with the off-white of the couch, reminding Kiyoomi of renaissance paintings of daybreak and sunsets. 

His mother had taken him to an art museum once when he was younger. He remembers being impressed by contemporary pieces, with paintings devoid of lines and sculptures devoid of structure. He remembers falling in love with fuzzy landscape paintings dotted with flowery brushstrokes and meticulously-painted portraits. 

Atsumu would probably like the museum. 

Here’s the thing Kiyoomi has learned about Atsumu during the last few weeks of the offseason: he’s not nearly as loud and irritating as he appears. 

Atsumu paints on a façade of confidence he never really had and wears it like his own. He’s perfected the mask, so much so that during the years that Kiyoomi has known Atsumu, he had just assumed that being annoying was Atsumu’s natural state. 

Cracks aren’t hard to find when you look close enough, though.

Atsumu never mentions Kiyoomi’s cleaning thing and in return, Kiyoomi doesn’t talk about Atsumu’s finger thing. Birds of a feather.

Atsumu murmurs something in his sleep, soft and fragile. He shifts closer to Kiyoomi, and Kiyoomi realizes, quite abruptly, that Atsumu’s head is very close to where he’s sitting. 

_Atsumu wouldn’t mind, right?_

Kiyoomi reaches out, allows his fingertips to brush the ends of Atsumu’s hair. Kiyoomi had been wrong. Some of the moisture from the shower remained, hidden in the edges of Atsumu’s hair. He allows his hand to drift further, fingers tangling with Atsumu’s golden hair.

Some part of Kiyoomi’s brain shouts at him, screams at him for touching Atsumu, touching the germs that have accumulated in his hair after the shower. A larger part of his brain realizes that this is the first time in a while that he’s been so close to someone, touched or been touched like this. 

He cards his fingers through Atsumu’s hair, grazing the roots before curling his fingers around the tips. Atsumu moves around a little, nestling his head into Kiyoomi’s hand. 

Kiyoomi freezes. Atsumu hasn’t said anything though, and his breathing is still heavy. 

Kiyoomi heaves out a sigh and continues combing through Atsumu’s hair. It’s a lot softer than he had thought it would be, strands easily parting as Kiyoomi’s fingers stroke through. 

Kiyoomi doesn’t know how it got to this point. How he had built up walls that touched the night sky, guarding a frail room in his chest, a frail room filled to the brim with devotion that Kiyoomi would readily give out if not for the walls. How Atsumu had managed to stumble through an opening in the walls without Kiyoomi noticing, how he had made the small room into something resembling a home.

_Cracks aren’t hard to find when you look close enough._

Kiyoomi’s fingers catch against a knot in Atsumu’s hair, inadvertently tugging at his hair. 

Atsumu startles at this, eyes fluttering before opening. His eyes are unfocused as they blink up at Kiyoomi and _oh_. 

_But if you look close enough, and you really have to look closely, you can see the light seeping through the cracks._

Atsumu offers a small smile before nudging closer to Kiyoomi and going back to sleep. 

Kiyoomi is fucked. 

Later on, Kiyoomi trades dinner for brushing his fingers through Atsumu’s hair, trades his usual night routine for bleary eyes and soft apologies. 

_This_ , Kiyoomi thinks, _is something I could get used to._

*

The coming together of Sakusa Kiyoomi and Miya Atsumu is inevitable. So when Atsumu confesses to Kiyoomi and Kiyoomi confesses to Atsumu, it really shouldn’t be a surprise. When Kiyoomi lets Atsumu press kisses to his face, his lips, his neck, and Atsumu lets Kiyoomi drag them out to the balcony to look at the stars, really, it isn’t a surprise. 

The world spins on and on, dizzyingly relentless, and Kiyoomi is caught somewhere in between, between in the right now, now right where he wants to be. 

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/claudusdiei)
> 
> i got the sudden urge to write sakusa as a huge vinyl fanatic one night at the wee hours of 3 - 4 a.m., so i pulled this abomination out of my ass in hopes to satisfy the urge  
> a few things:  
> -[lake kawaguchiko](https://www.japan-guide.com/g18/6906_01.jpg)  
> -[this](https://youtu.be/D7aYjRl_6Zw) is the LP that sakusa bought in fukurodani. I found it while researching for this fic which led me to fall down a rabbithole of japanese ambient music i am yet to pull myself out of  
> -i know,,, i just know sakusa is a vinyl nerd. i can sense it  
> -this is the spiritual companion/sequel to [take what’s yours and make it mine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23745991), if you would like to see atsumu’s side of their getting together and his weird obsession with yellow tulips, please check it out  
> -it may seem like i hate atsumu bc of all the shit i give him but i actually love him a lot  
> have a great day thank you for reading <3


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